A Dream

A dream you dream alone is just a dream. A dream you dream together is reality. ~ John Lennon

I ran across this quote a few days ago and I can’t get it out of my head. Like so much of what John had to say, it manages to be both trite and profound at the same time. He was talking about Double Fantasy, the album he was working on with his wife just before his assassination, but he was also talking about his marriage. As I approach a major anniversary of dreaming with my husband, I can’t help but wish that John and Yoko could have dreamed together for many more years. How much richer the world might be.
 

So what does this have to do with a blog in the Rose Garden? Just this: we humans are dreamers. We dream in the womb, we dream awake and asleep, we dream until we die. We tell ourselves stories about life and death and the realities in between, and we tell each other stories.
 

Aha, you say, she’s finally getting to the point. Writers in particular are dreamers (as are actors, singers, knitters, artists, engineers, politicians, lovers…). We’re very good at dreaming alone; picture all those back-of-the-drawer manuscripts we’ve written since we could first mangle a crayon in our fists. We are drowning in dreams. But remember Lennon’s second point: dreaming together is reality. A manuscript is just a pile of paper until you invite someone else into that particular dream.
 

You all know how scary and even painful it can be to share your story. With a little luck, you’ll find someone who respects it. With more luck, that someone will be capable of elucidating what you’ve written until every word glows. With even more luck, you’ll find other dreamers whose dreams have built a company capable of sharing your story with many more people than you ever dared to dream.
 

Imagine all the elements that become a part of the saga: your story-dream; other writers who critique and support you; the editor who dreams with you; the publishers who bring you together; the cover artists and layout pros; the people who created the machines and technology to produce and sell your book; the readers who enter your world and pass it on to others—even people like me, who weave dreams about the dreams you dream—all coalesce to conjure a new reality: your book.
 

A book that enriches the world long after we stop dreaming and makes a fantasy far more than double.

by editor Kinan Werdski